Vivek Anand is Uninor's new CFO; Prasoon Sinha moves to Telenor HQ

Telenor group has appointed Vivek Anand as the Chief Financial Officer of Uninor, reports PTI.

Anand will be taking over from the current Uninor CFO Prasoon Sinha who will be relocating to the Telenor’s Oslo headquarters as its Vice President and Head of Dynamic Performance Management Project of its Group finance division.

In this role, Sinha will be implementing Uninor’s cluster-based analysis and evaluation on a global level. Note that Sinha has now been with Uninor for six years and was involved in developing Uninor’s new low-cost business model. This transition is expected to end by April 2014 and Anand will be taking his position in May 2014.

Prior to this appointment, Anand was with Unilever for 14 years in various roles, most recently being Unilever Bangladesh’s CFO. He’s also served as Unilever Singapore’s regional finance director and HUL’s National Commercial Manager, Sales and Customer Development among others. Before Unilever, he’s worked at Kotak Mahindra Finance Ltd and ICI Ltd.

Earlier this year, Telenor Group had also appointed Morten Karlsen Sørby as the new Uninor CEO, replacing Sigve Brekke who was serving as Uninor’s acting CEO after the former CEO Yogesh Malik quit in November 2013 citing personal reasons.

Telenor Group looking to increase Uninor stake to 100%

In a interview with The Economic Times, Telenor Group’s Asia head Sigve Brekke has mentioned that they are considering increasing its Uninor stake to 100%, now that India allows 100% FDI in telecom. However, there is no immediate plan to do this, since the telco was focusing on 2G auctions until now.

Telenor had increased its stake in Telewings, which provides telecom services in India under the Uninor brand, to 74% in December 2013. This was after receiving an approval from India’s Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) to increase its stake to 74% from the existing 49%, and invest up to Rs 1,000 crore in the JV.

Uninor had earlier announced that it had achieved cash flow break even at the end of 2013. It had later acquired 6MHz spectrum in a new circle of Assam for Rs 216.6 crore, along with additional spectrum in existing circles like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, UP (East), UP (West) in the recently concluded 2G auctions.